Bobby Fischer’s death brings to mind my experience during his famous match against Boris Spassky in the summer of 1972. About a year and a half out of active service I had been called up for reserves’ training at Fort Drum in New York. Due to the kind-hearted efforts of an alcoholic staff sergeant in the personnel section of my infantry battalion on the DMZ in Korea, my MOS had been changed from grunt to clerk with the result that instead of humping the boonies that summer I had a ridiculously cushy job in camp HQ. Every day, about a dozen of us were responsible for tallying the roll call results for the day and creating a report. That took less than an hour with, in those days, paper, pencil, and typewriter first thing in the morning, leaving us free to do whatever we wanted for the rest of the day in our well ventilated though not air-conditioned office.

We’d get a copy of the New York Times and study the previous day’s play in the Fischer-Spassky match, going through all the moves and discussing their meaning. Then we’d read and play chess against each other until quitting time. Bobby was our hero.